Five Key Drivers of Equity in Schools (from Marshall Memo 9/25/2023)

 Five Key Drivers of Equity in Schools

(Originally titled “Creating Clarity on Equity in Schools”)

In this Educational Leadership article, Pedro Noguera (University of Southern

California) and Joaquín Noguera (Loyola Marymount University) say we’re living through “a

particularly perilous time for equity efforts in education.” That’s because K-12 equity work is

being questioned by the political right (for being “woke” on race and LGBTQ) and by K-12

leaders (defensive about their lack of measurable progress).

When the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act proclaimed that all students would receive an

adequate education by 2014, there was lots of support in red and blue states and lofty slogans

and exhortations around equity. “However,” say Noguera and Noguera, “support for what

equity work truly entails never ran deep, and it soon became clear that many policymakers and

education leaders who espoused support for equity did not actually understand what was

required to achieve it… Lack of progress combined with lack of clarity on equity has left

schools open to backlash.”

Some schools are making solid progress, say Noguera and Noguera, and that’s because

they have articulated a clear vision that responds to student and community needs, decided on

effective strategies, implemented an action plan, and monitored progress. Successful schools

embrace a vision of equity that provides historically underserved students with the support they

need, identifies the root causes of disparities in special education and disciplinary referrals, and

maintains high standards and expectations for all – which includes keeping honors and

advanced placement courses. “It is profoundly important,” say the authors, “that the

commitment to equity not be interpreted as a retreat from the pursuit of academic excellence.”

To be successful, they say, schools must somehow work on “everything, everywhere,

and almost all at once” – curriculum, learning materials, cultural responsiveness, high-quality

teaching, school climate, and more. To keep from being overwhelmed and scattering their

efforts too widely, Noguera and Noguera recommend the five essentials for school

improvement identified in 2010 by the Chicago Consortium on School Improvement. They

believe these are what today’s equity warriors should focus on:

• A coherent approach to learning and teaching – School leaders articulate a clear

instructional framework and bring teachers together to plan lessons and assessments, analyze

student results, and continuously adapt and improve instruction. “By reducing teacher isolation

and providing greater clarity on curriculum and instructional expectations,” say Noguera and

Noguera, “leaders can increase teacher quality throughout a school – a key starting point for

equity.”

• Ongoing development of professional quality – “Like students, teachers vary in their

abilities and needs,” say the authors; “teachers cannot teach what they do not know.” Schools

must provide high-quality, differentiated professional development that addresses pedagogical

and cultural gaps, and give teachers opportunities to plan and analyze student work with

experienced colleagues, observe other classrooms, and get specific feedback and coaching that

is helpful, not threatening.

• A student-centered school culture – “The schools that make the greatest progress in

meeting their equity goals,” say Noguera and Noguera, “work to create a culture that prioritizes

students’ needs. This means faculty and staff must be curious about students’ needs and

students’ interests. They must work to become students of local culture and keepers of

community knowledge.” This includes finding curriculum materials that affirm students’

culture and heritage and address their developmental needs.

• Parent and community involvement – The key is going beyond bake sales and

engaging family members as thought partners, collaborators, co-designers, and community

leaders who are valued and respected partners in providing all students with high-quality

learning experiences. Effective schools also develop partnerships with community

organizations, churches, universities, hospitals, and local nonprofits.

• Shared leadership that drives change – Research on effective schools has always

emphasized the critical role of the principal, say Noguera and Noguera, and that role has even

more impact when school leaders distribute decision making and responsibility. “When a

school staff embraces a common vision of how things should be done,” they say, “and when

staff are able to take ownership of common goals, progress can grow exponentially.”

“Creating Clarity on Equity in Schools” by Pedro Noguera and Joaquín Noguera in

Educational Leadership, September 2023 (Vol. 81, #1, pp. 28-34); the authors can be reached

at rossier.dean@usc.edu and joaquin.noguera@lmu.edu .

Mike Schmoker Radically Simplified ELA Curriculum

 “Radical Reset: The Case for Minimalist Standards” by Mike Schmoker in Educational Leadership, February 2020 (Vol. 77, #5, pp. 44-50), https://bit.ly/2vouIvW; Schmoker can be reached at schmoker@futureone.com

From Marshall Memo (#832).

            “In profound ways, literacy is destiny,” says author/speaker/consultant Mike Schmoker in this Educational Leadership article. “It is the single most important goal of schooling and the key to academic and career success.” The Common Core standards were a well-intentioned effort to pare down ELA standards and support effective literacy instruction, says Schmoker, but he believes the standards went off the rails – an important reason that American students’ achievement over the last decade has flatlined.

            What went wrong? “In the heady development phase, there was plenty to like about the ELA Common Core,” says Schmoker. “They called for vastly more content-rich, grade-level reading, discussion, writing – and writing instruction – across subject areas.” The Common Core ELA’s introduction and appendices are “inspiring and largely on-target.” However, says Schmoker, the detailed standards created by committees are “an impossible profusion of grade-by-grade minutiae.” The result is that many teachers have been spending far too much class time on strategies, skill drills, and worksheets, and students aren’t doing much real reading, discussing, and writing grounded in literature and subject-area knowledge. Hence the lack of progress at a national level.

            How can we return to the fundamentals that Common Core got right and “reset” literacy instruction in classrooms? Schmoker recommends that school leaders issue explicit public statements describing what went wrong so teachers and parents understand what isn’t working and why. Then schools and districts should go about reducing the literacy curriculum to the essentials. For starters, this means intensive, explicit phonics instruction so every student is able to decode text by the end of first grade. But this shouldn’t distract from the core of literacy, which Schmoker believes is “frequent, abundant amounts of reading, discussion, and writing” from the very beginning. He agrees with Richard Allington’s 2006 goal of students doing at least 60 minutes of reading and 40 minutes of writing (across the curriculum) every day.

Following this general injunction, what do simple, high-leverage standards look like? Schmoker suggests that teacher teams spell out “the approximate number, amount, length, and frequency” of reading, writing, and discussion for each grade level – specifically:

-    The number of knowledge-rich, grade-appropriate fiction and non-fiction books, articles, textbook selections, poems, plays, and primary resources students will read in each course (a high-performing network of schools in Texas and Arizona posted its grade-by-grade sequence at https://bit.ly/35FkPak);

-    The number of pages of actual text (minus illustrations) that students will read each year (for example, at least 1,000 pages);

-    The number and approximate length of inquiry-based discussions, seminars, and debates students engage in – that are “purposeful, grounded in reading, and aligned with simple criteria,” says Schmoker, “– for example, speak audibly, clearly, logically, and with civility.”

-    The number and approximate length of short writing assignments completed each day and week, and more extensive, capstone-like projects at the end of a grading period or year, all assessed with detailed scoring guides and supported by exemplars of high-quality work.

Are such short, basic standards (without detailed skill objectives) enough to guide teachers? asks Schmoker. Absolutely, he says, citing the gains of a number of schools and networks that have taken this approach. “So why wait?” he challenges. “Arrange, as soon as possible, for your school or district teams to develop provisional standards and expectations for reading, discussion, and writing. Then stand back and watch your students’ life chances soar.”

Levels of Inquiry-Based Learning

 from Marshall Memo 871:

A Continuum of Inquiry-Based Learning

In this article in Social Education, Kathy Swan (University of Kentucky), S.G. Grant (Binghamton University), and John Lee (North Carolina State University) describe their Inquiry Design Model, which involves building curriculum units around questions, tasks, and sources. The authors describe five types of inquiry, ranging from teacher-developed to student-developed:

• Focused inquiry – The teacher develops the inquiry but focuses on a particular disciplinary skill and piece of content – for example, causation, maps, or research. The authors describe a curriculum unit on the federal debt, guided by the “compelling question,” Does debt matter?

• Structured inquiry – The teacher develops the blueprint to scaffold disciplinary and civic outcomes. An example is a unit on the Great Compromise of 1787, with the question, Is compromise always fair?

• Embedded action – The teacher develops the inquiry, but focuses on structuring the understand-assess-act sequence into the core of the blueprint. The authors describe a curriculum unit on the debate over Obamacare, guided by the question, Why is the Affordable Care Act so controversial?

• Guided inquiry – The teacher develops the inquiry but there are dedicated spaces for students to conduct independent research. The authors describe a curriculum unit on the Civil Rights Movement, guided by the question, What made nonviolent protest effective during this movement?

• Student-directed inquiry – Students develops the blueprint on a question of interest and plan the inquiry using the blueprint. The sample curriculum unit here is an investigation of the LGBTQ+ movement, guided by the question, What makes a movement successful?

The “roof” over this “house of inquiry,” say the authors, is that students “ask good questions and develop robust investigations into them; consider possible solutions and consequences; separate evidence-based claims from parochial ones; and communicate and act upon what they learn.” Above all, students increasingly take ownership of the process and can replicate it in the years ahead.

“Blueprinting an Inquiry-Based Curriculum: Planning with the Inquiry Design Model” by Kathy Swan, S.G. Grant, and John Lee in Social Education, November/December 2020 (Vol. 84, #6, pp. 377-383); Swan can be reached at kswan@uky.edu.

New York Times Writing Curriculum

 

Last year the New York Times Writing Curriculum got great.  Each unit contains prompts, daily writing prompts, guided practice with mentor texts (show don't tell, express critical opinions, quote or paraphrase experts, craft scripts for podcasts), Annotated by the Author commentaries, a contest that can be the final project, webinars.

What are the units?

 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER

Unit 1: Documenting Teenage Lives in Extraordinary Times

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER

Unit 2: The Personal Narrative

DECEMBER-JANUARY

Unit 3: The Review

JANUARY-FEBRUARY

Unit 4: Informational Writing

MARCH-APRIL

Unit 5: Argumentative Writing

APRIL-MAY

Unit 6: Writing for Podcasts

JUNE-AUGUST

Unit 7: Independent Reading and Writing

"Instructional Shifts to Support Deeper Learning" - McTighe and Silver - notes

 One big idea that highlights "the big skills" in education (and LA classrooms):

Focus less on didactic instruction and more on active meaning making by students. Students should be “earning” understanding of critical content by actively, independently processing new material using these higher-order skills.

-    Conceptualizing abstract ideas;

-    Note-taking and summarizing;

-    Comparing;

-    Reading beyond the literal meaning;

-    Predicting and hypothesizing;

-    Visualizing, graphic representation;

-    Empathizing and perspective-taking.

“Instructional Shifts to Support Deep Learning” by Jay McTighe and Harvey Silver in Educational Leadership, September 2020 (Vol. 78, #1); 

Dylan Wiliam: How to Improve Curriculum and Teaching

from Marshall Memo #880

Dylan Wiliam on Two Strategies That Really Work in Schools

            “Today in America,” says assessment guru Dylan Wiliam in his latest book, “the biggest problem with education is not that it is bad. It is that it variable. In hundreds of thousands of classrooms in America, students are getting an education that is as good as any in the world. But in hundreds of thousands of others, they are not.” Wiliam argues that these recent initiatives in U.S. schools are not the best ways to solve the problem of variability:

-    Recruiting “smarter” people as teachers (they aren’t necessarily effective with kids);

-    Focusing on firing “bad” teachers (although of course the very worst need to go);

-    Using infrequent classroom observations (“Good teachers have bad days and bad teachers have good days,” says Wiliam);

-    Using test scores to evaluate teachers (“Every teacher builds on the foundations laid by those who taught their students previously.”);

-    Merit pay for the “best” teachers (there aren’t reliable ways to identify them);

-    Reducing class size (except in the lower grades, if effective teachers are available);

-    Copying the practices of other countries (many of their ideas don’t travel well);

-    Expanding school choice (there are several challenges and scaling up is problematic).

So what does work? Wiliam believes two approaches will bring more good teaching to more students more of the time, with particular benefits for the least advantaged:

            • A knowledge-rich curriculum – Students enter school with significant differences in vocabulary, processing power, and working memory. However, says Wiliam, “The differences in people’s intelligence and differences in the capacities of their short-term working memories (which undoubtedly exist) matter very little if they have the same extensive knowledge. Education can’t do much for intelligence or working memory, but it can have a massive impact on long-term memory.” That’s why a curriculum rich in knowledge closes achievement gaps.

“The big mistake we have made in the United States, and indeed in many other countries,” Wiliam continues, “is to assume that if we want students to be able to think, then our curriculum should give our students lots of practice in thinking. This is a mistake because what our students need is more to think with. The main purpose of curriculum is to build up the content of long-term memory so that when students are asked to think, they are able to think in more powerful ways because what is in their long-term memories makes their short-term memories more powerful. That is why curriculum matters.”

Wiliam lists these desiderata for a high-quality curriculum: (a) it’s well aligned with the aims of K-12 education; (b) it has a carefully structured sequence for building knowledge (for example, it’s easier for students to understand how to find the area of a triangle if they’ve first learned how to find the area of a parallelogram); (c) the pacing of knowledge acquisition avoids overloading short-term memory; (d) material is distributed over weeks, months, and years with review built in; and (e) students have frequent opportunities for self-testing so knowledge is firmly embedded in long-term memory.

            • Improving the teachers we have – “Schools and districts need to focus on the idea that all teachers need to get better,” says Wiliam, “not because they’re not good enough but because they can be even better. Moving the focus from evaluation to improvement also changes working relationships in a building. Where teachers are in competition, either because they are seeking scarce bonuses or to avoid sanctions, then they are unlikely to help each other. In contrast, when it is expected that all teachers improve, cooperation is encouraged and even expected.”

            Teacher teamwork has the greatest potential to improve teaching and learning, says Wiliam, so the most important job of school leaders is fostering a professional environment that supports frequent team collaboration. Foundational conditions include: order and discipline; addressing teachers’ basic concerns; time and resources for professional development; a culture of trust and respect; a “press” for student achievement; and reorienting teacher evaluation to focus on improving instructional practices.

For teacher team meetings to have the greatest benefit for students, Wiliam believes they need to be tightly structured and spend most of the time looking at evidence of student learning (from classroom assessments or samples of student work). He and his colleagues have developed the following steps for once-a-month 75-minute team meetings (with one member serving as timekeeper and facilitator). The focus is always on looking at student work and assessment evidence and thinking of the best ways to adapt instruction to meet students’ needs in real time. Here’s the structure:

-    The teacher responsible for running the meeting outlines the meeting’s aims, including the student learning intentions and criteria for success (5 minutes).

-    The team does a warm-up activity, perhaps sharing something a student said that made them smile, something a colleague did to support their work, something they’re looking forward to, or something that’s bugging them (5 minutes).

-    Each teacher reports on an instructional change they promised to try in their classrooms at the previous meeting with evidence of how it went, and colleagues share ideas and suggestions (25 minutes).

-    The team discusses a new article, book chapter, or video on formative assessment (20 minutes).

-    Each teacher shares a classroom practice they are going to implement over the coming month (15 minutes).

-    The team wraps up by reviewing whether the meeting’s goals were met – and if not, what action needs to be taken (5 minutes).

Wiliam says this protocol has been dramatically successful in improving teaching and learning in hundreds of schools across the U.S.

Educators often voice two concerns about structuring team meetings this way. First, will having the same sequence be monotonous? Not so, says Wiliam; a familiar structure with different content keeps things on track and saves time that might be taken up repeatedly inventing new structures. Second, don’t teachers need an outside facilitator to stay on task? “Our experience,” says Wiliam, “is that teachers really can do it for themselves.” He points to three reasons for not depending on teacher coaches as facilitators: (a) pulling good teachers out of the classroom to serve as coaches often results in a net loss of a school’s instructional capacity; (b) coaching positions are often the first to be cut in hard budget times; and (c) coaches don’t always have credibility. “Even when teachers come from the district,” says Wiliam, “as soon as they stop teaching and become coaches, many teachers regard the coaches as being out of touch with the realities of teaching.”

            What makes this meeting structure so successful? First, says Wiliam, “focusing on classroom assessment seems to be a smart place to begin the conversation with teachers… All teachers in America would probably agree that it is part of their day job to find out whether students have learned what they have been taught.” Second, research points to the power of formative (on-the-spot) assessments to improve teaching and learning by adjusting instruction minute-by-minute and day-by-day, and that is always the heart of these teacher meetings. And third, says Wiliam, “when we develop teachers’ ability to use real-time assessment to adapt their instruction to their students’ learning needs, those skills can be applied in all their teaching.”

            Boosting these skills involves changing teachers’ daily practice, which can be challenging. Wiliam believes this “is most likely to be achieved through regular meetings where teachers promise to their peers what they are going to try out in their classrooms and are held accountable for making those changes.”

Creating the Schools Our Children Need by Dylan Wiliam (Learning Sciences International, 2018); Wiliam can be reached at dylanwiliam@mac.com.

Questions that Help PLCs Close the Learning Gap

From Marshall Memo 808 - October 21, 2019

Questions That Help PLCs Close Achievement Gaps

            In this article in The Learning Professional, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey (San Diego State University and Health Sciences High) and John Almarode (James Madison University) say professional learning communities are not always fulfilling their potential. The authors suggest five questions to focus same-grade/same-subject teams on improving teaching and learning and achieving equitable outcomes:

            • Where are we going? Learning goals that are well-framed and clear can also contain low expectations – for example, a fifth-grade team planning lessons based on third-grade expectations. When this happens, say Fisher, Frey, and Almarode, students don’t work up to their potential and achievement gaps aren’t closed. Teacher teams need to put grade-level expectations on the table, analyze the gaps and barriers to better performance, and orchestrate the support that students need.

            • Where are we now? “When teams discuss the current performance levels of their students,” say the authors, “they are often confronted with the reality that some students have not had equitable opportunities to learn to grade-level standards, and they are called on to accept responsibility to close the gap.” This is the heart of PLC work.

            • How do we move learning forward? When teams don’t get specific on this question, say Fisher, Frey, and Almarode, “some well-meaning teachers end up using ineffective approaches, like assigning worksheets or doing all the work for students.” The culture of a teacher team has to be such that team members are candid with each other and share teaching practices that produce results – including materials and pedagogy that are culturally relevant.

            • What did we learn today? This includes students’ academic progress based on frequent checks for understanding, and also teachers’ lesson-by-lesson insights on what’s working, what reteaching and extension tasks are necessary, and how pedagogy can be improved.

            • Who benefited and who did not? The authors believe it’s important for PLCs to break down assessment data by student subgroups. The Progress versus Achievement Tool is helpful www.visiblelearningplus.com/groups/progress-vs-achievement-tool (registration required). So is plotting students’ achievement on this quadrant:

Students who achieved well but did not make a lot of progress	Students who achieved well and made strong progress
Students who did not make progress and did not achieve at the average of the class	Students who made progress but still need to achieve more

One teacher team that used this approach noticed that the lower left-hand quadrant was filled with English learners. “Without visualizing the data this way,” said a teacher, “I would have focused on the individual students in my class who needed more support. But it’s clear that we need to do something different for our English learners if we have any hopes that they will succeed.”

“5 Questions PLCs Should Ask to Promote Equity” by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Almarode in The Learning Professional, October 2019 (Vol. 40, #5, pp. 44-47),

https://bit.ly/2pDNI6W and scroll down; the authors can be reached at dfisher@sdsu.edu, nfrey@sdsu.edu, and almarojt@jmu.edu. 

From Marshall Memo 811:

Nine Questions for a PLC Data Meeting

            In this sidebar in All Things PLC, Robert Eaker and Janel Keating suggest an agenda for a grade-level teacher team looking at the results of an assessment given to all students. They suggest about five minutes for each item, with more time for two toward the end:

-    What are the “power standards” or learning targets measured by this assessment?

-    In what areas did our students do well?

-    What instructional strategies helped our students do well?

-    What skill deficiencies do we see?

-    What patterns do we see in the mistakes, and what do they tell us?

-    Which students did not master essential standards and which need additional time and support?

-    What interventions will be provided to address unlearned skills, and how will we check for success? (20 minutes)

-    Which students mastered standards and what is our plan for extending and enriching their learning? (10 minutes)

-    Do we need to tweak or improve this assessment?

“Team Analysis of Common Formative Assessments” in All Things PLC, Fall 2019 (p. 35); these questions come from Every School, Every Team, Every Classroom: District Leadership for Growing Professional Learning Communities at Work by Robert Eaker and Janel Keating (Solution Tree, 2012)